The Olson Zoo Weblog

Mom & Dad Olson are famous! They and several of their Chinese friends are featured in a story from tomorrow’s Star Tribune.

Here is a scanned version of the article that includes a picture: Thanksgiving 2006 Star Tribune Article [550k PDF]

Full article copied below:

Turkey is antidote for the loneliness of Chinese students
Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune

What’s the loneliest day of the year? Thanksgiving, if you’re a foreign student at the University of Minnesota. While everyone else celebrates with family members, turkey and pumpkin pie, you’re stuck in an empty apartment.

But for Yang Lin, Jing Jing Zheng and his wife, Yi Hui Lei, things are different. They are spending Thanksgiving by the warm hearth of Ross and Karin Olson in Minneapolis.
(more…)

A couple of nights ago I was putting Laura to bed and somehow we started playing “The Opposite Game”. This game consists of one person saying a word and the other person guessing the opposite.

I started out as the first person, saying words, and Laura guessing the opposite. She was doing very well. Examples: hot/cold; up/down; left/right; happy/sad; etc.

After I while I started to run out of words that have opposites. So I asked Laura to take a turn. She asked me “What’s the opposite of ‘tree’?”. I told her I didn’t know.

With a glint in her eye, she said “a squirrel!” We laughed, and I told Laura that she had made a funny joke. She said “yeah.”

Fun times.